When women come forward about abuse—sexual, religious, emotional, physical, financial, verbal, etc.—reactions often vary widely. Some people cheer on the survivors. Some people question why the victims didn’t come forward earlier. Some people worry that people have been falsely accused.
Two years ago, I posted my own story of sexual and religious abuse on YouTube. Knowing that people often respond defensively, I worried:
In telling my story, who would be impacted and how? What if telling my story caused harm instead of good? I wasn’t concerned about my abusers. But I agonized over how my truth could affect the lives of those close to my abusers, people I still care about. People who had something to lose. What if they were hurt?
I thought about the wives of my ab...Read more

You’ve probably heard about the tragic murder of Iowan Mollie Tibbetts by now. Tibbetts was reportedly killed by a man because she rejected his advances and he was angered by her refusal.
In a 2016 survey on street harassment, thirty percent of women respondents said they’ve been followed while on a run. Eighteen percent said they’ve been propositioned by a stranger. And according to a recent survey by an anti-harassment non-profit, eighty-one percent of women have been sexually harassed at least once and fifty-one percent of women reported being touched sexually without permission.
Being a woman in public is an uncomfortable and often dangerous assignment. I’d wager that most women know the perils of rejecting a man’s advances by the time they...Read more

Does God prefer “debt-free virgins without tattoos”? A recent viral article claims that men do, and that women should avoid college, independence, career, and the world—lest they fall into debt and sexual failure and be unattractive to Christian men.
Notably, tattoos, after the title, get precious little mention! And there's our first clue that the author doesn’t support her claims well. The article says nothing further about tattoos and also says little about biblical values regarding fiscal responsibility and sex.
Despite the author’s well-intentioned desire to teach young women to live biblically, she promotes a culturally-influenced view of Christian womanhood. Fundamentally, this cultural view of women assumes they’re more susceptible to world...Read more

Christian conferences exist to serve and edify the church. They provide an opportunity for believers to have community with each other and to learn from each other’s faith and experiences. They also provide platforms to leaders and visionaries who then shape how Christians think about and practice their faith.
Christian conferences are a powerful tool. They can be used to engage, include, and challenge all Christians. They can also hurt and exclude believers who are already marginalized in US society and in the Christian family. And, they can confirm the conscious or unconscious biases and attitudes of the more powerful group.
As a Latina, I have been hurt by how the church excludes those who look like me from the leadership and theology of Christian conferences. And as a woman, I...Read more

In December, TIME magazine named the “Silence Breakers,” the women who broke their silence on abuse last year, their “Person[s] of the Year.” The pervasiveness of abuse was made evident with the #MeToo movement this year and awareness swelled as Christians added their voices with #ChurchToo and the more recent #SilenceIsNotSpiritual—a statement calling the church to end silence on gender-based violence.
As an early editor of the #SilenceIsNotSpiritual statement, I added data about the 200 million girls and women missing to expose the gender-holocaust distorting humanity. These countless victims are the result of a confederacy of abuse that spans the globe and every demographic. Given the betrayal of humanity these numbers signify, exposing the abuse, though c...Read more

This submission is one of our top ten CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
Editor's Note: We’d like to see all churches embrace egalitarian theology, but in the event that a church is not yet prepared to do so, we offer these four ways they can move closer to being a safer and more positive space for women.
Many complementarians want to respect women’s needs and stories and benefit more concretely from their insights, but are not sure how to begin moving in that direction. I used to leave church in frustration every week because of the implicit marginalization on display in services. A childhood, or lifetime, of watching women pushed further to the edges of leadership and visibility has an immense impact on a woman’s self-worth.
So, if your church of choice is firm...Read more

Growing up in a complementarian, Baptist church environment, I thought I knew exactly what God expected a Christian wife to be. I was confident that a good Christian wife keeps her house clean and orderly; it is to be her hard-working husband’s haven. She ensures that her husband comes home to a homemade meal every evening. She stays out of the financial affairs of the home because her husband is the breadwinner. She obeys him without question. She supports him no matter what. She does not complain. She does not rebel. She is her husband’s faithful (albeit often silent and invisible) helper.
I am an introverted people-pleaser and a rule-following perfectionist. From a very early age, I eagerly awaited the day when submissive and total obedience to my husband would become my jo...Read more

This submission is one of our top ten CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
I am fortunate to belong to a global denomination that affirms and supports women in ministry. Since its official formation in 1908, the Church of the Nazarene has ordained women right alongside their male colleagues. I’ve often heard it remarked that Nazarene women could preach twelve years before they could vote in US elections!
However, even in a church tradition with a strong history of ordaining women into ministry, I have often seen and experienced what might be called “subtle sexism.” It is not blatant or overt. It is more like an undercurrent, silently churning beneath apparently calm waters. It ripples to the surface in indirect ways: through poor exegesis that does not take into account...Read more

“The silence surrounding domestic violence affects all of us. It’s a big secret... We sit in churches every Sunday and we rarely, if ever, hear a sermon preached about the devastation of domestic violence.”
—Johnrice Newton at CBE’s conference in Orlando
Domestic violence, particularly against women, isn’t always something the church wants to talk about. After all, it hurts to admit that abuse happens within the community of God, perhaps more so than it hurts to acknowledge the violence of the secular world. But we cannot afford to remain silent or apathetic, not when the stakes are so high. Not when our brothers and sisters are at risk.
Domestic violence leaves so many people made in the image of God dead or walking wounded—physically or spirit...Read more

This submission is one of our top ten CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
It was a typical summer weekend service at our local church. I was perusing the bulletin announcements about our son’s upcoming youth group trip that included a water park excursion. Amidst the details for the trip was the following blurb instructing students what to bring:
“Bring: Sleeping bag, pillow, toiletries, change of clothes (dress for the weather), swimsuit (girls one-piece or tankini please), towel and $$ for two fast food dinners.”
I was immediately uncomfortable with the assumptions behind the swimming suit instructions; the question became what was I going to do about it? A a busy mom of four boys ages 7-12, it took me a couple weeks to carve out time to sit down, pray through i...Read more